OWASP Attacks Part 2 - Exploitation of Authentication

Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) aka One-Click attack
The goal of a CSRF is not to steal information directly, but to force a user into performing actions that they are unaware of.
A cornerstone premise for this attack is that a site/application that you are logged into will perform all actions as you since your credentials are already stored via cookie or session variables.
For example,
Say an attacker knows Dennis uses Bank of Canada's web site.
Say the attacker knows of a CSRF vulnerability on the BOC website that can be performed with URL manipulation, something like this:

www.bankofcanada.com/transfer.php?account=5555&amt=400

If Dennis is logged into his BOC account and visits this link, 400 of his hard earned loonies are transferred over to the owner of account number 5555.
How can we get Dennis to visit this link?
We could XSS a site that he regularly visits, or we could use the company email that allows HTML, something like

<a href="https://www.blogger.com/www.bankofcanada.com/transfer.php?account=5555&amt=400">Look at this stupid cat!</a>

Dennis' insatiable love of cats just cost him $400.
There are countless ways of getting a person to click on a link. People hate blue links.

You should check your site to ensure there is not functionality that can be initiated purely from the URL or from any GET commands.

To detect this vulnerability you can set up a proxy between a browser and the site and examine the requests being made and then try to inject those same requests when logged in as another user.

There are a lot of ways that a site can defend its user base from such attacks. The most simple is to enforce session time out for users that are logged in, this is by no means a catch all, but it will help.
The best defense is to implement a  Synchronizer Token Pattern.
A random token is generated and included in forms/procedures of a site that ensure that a request to that functionality came from the site itself and not from an outside link/script.

Session Hijacking
When you log into a web site or web application the server needs to keep track of who you are, it does this by creating a Session ID. A session ID is a long string of alpha-numerical characters that is unique to your session with the server.
A session hijacking attack occurs when it is possible for an attacker to successfully obtain your session id or guess a future session id.

A session id can be stolen from network sniffing, a man-in-the-middle attack, cookie stealing, or XSS.
Once stolen an attacker can use a site/application while masquerading as the victim.

To help prevent session hijacking be sure your site has an up to date certificate and supports use of HTTPS.
Use a long, random session id, do not use something predictable such as the user id.
Do not reuse session ids.
Encourage users to log off after they are finished and include session timeout functionality, this will help prevent hanging sessions.